New details have come to light regarding the US Army Corps of Engineers’ June 20th decision to suspend the Willits Bypass’ US Clean Water Act permit (404 permit): the first time the Corps has ever suspended a northern California project on Clean Water Act grounds.

The timing of the suspension was linked to CalTrans’ efforts to resume importing soil from the Mendocino Forest Products (ie, Mendocino Redwood Company) mill site north of Willits, which is Big Orange’s preferred source of fill to create the massive berm on which the freeway would be perched north of its roughly one-mile viaduct past Hearst-Willits Road.

CalTrans had to gain approval from the Army Corps to begin hauling fill from the mill site. With Big Orange’s application to haul roughly 900,000 cubic yards of perhaps toxic soil and dump on Little Lake Valley’s figurative kidneys sitting on Corps staff members’ desk, they took the opportunity to conduct a thorough investigation of Big Orange’s progress on their mitigation plan so far.

What they found was that CalTrans is flagrantly violating its permit, which includes a series of deadlines and benchmarks for the mitigation plan. Army Corps Chief Regulator Jane Hicks reportedly considers the mitigation work to be only five percent completed, whereas CalTrans claims the construction of the freeway is almost half-way complete (a questionable claim).

The Corps devoted an inordinate amount of staff time and resources to, in essence, holding CalTrans’ hand through the process of developing the mitigation plan, so they are not taking the combination of incompetence and obstinance that has led to the delays lightly.

For example, the suspension noted that CalTrans has not even completed the required baseline study (which requires a full calendar year to complete) for the eight parcels it was supposed to have started the mitigation wetland establishment and rehabilitation on in July 2013 and completed by January 2014. The Corps is requiring that CalTrans compensate for the delays by meeting several criteria that will be quite difficult for Big Orange to carry out, including generating new wetlands mitigation and restoration projects in Little Lake Valley.

As this issue went to press, we learned that CalTrans has just responded to the suspension order by sending their crews home, pending a resolution of their differences with the Corps.

At first, Big Orange interpreted the Army Corps’ permit suspension to mean they could continue select work on the Bypass, including on the southern part of the project. CalTrans claimed in a statement that they were poised to spend $100,000 a day in delays to keep only a portion of work going, forcing them to make the tough choice to call off construction completely.

Sending their 100-or-so construction crew members home early is no small move on CalTrans’ part. It likely means that no further construction on the Bypass will take place this year. It is also an indication that Big Orange’s negotiations with the Army Corps are not going well for CalTrans.

The Bypass’ damage to wetlands is so severe that a condition of building it is one of the largest, most expensive mitigation plans in recent memory in Northern California. As presently written, the mitigation plan would cost at least $65 million and encompass more than 400 acres of Little Lake Valley land.

Yet, the mitigation plan would also involve excavation of roughly 266,000 cubic yards of soil to “create wetlands,” according to a federal court filing by the Army Corps last year. The mitigation itself would actually involve a considerable amount of wetlands destruction in the name of wetlands creation.

The group Save Our Little Lake Valley is calling for downsizing the northern interchange as part of any future agreement by the Army Corps and CalTrans, which they say would save 25-30 acres of wetlands. CalTrans designed a plan featuring exactly such a reduced northern interchange in 2007.

* * *

In keeping with the Anderson Valley Advertiser’s editorial stance opposing the Willits Bypass, as well as my own work as a journalist and activist, I have been working to oppose the Willits Bypass since December 2012.

On June 20, 2013, exactly one year prior to the Army Corps’ announcement that it was ordering work to stop on the Bypass, I scaled a 100-foot-tall piece of construction equipment that was installing drainage tubes in the Little Lake Valley wetlands to block CalTrans’ destruction of that area.

During my occupation of the stitcher, Army Corps Chief Regulator Jane Hicks made her initial compliance inspection of the Bypass construction. She followed up by writing up CalTrans for numerous violations, which paved the way for the current permit suspension to Caltrans District 1 Director Charles Fielder. Based on an on-site mitigation compliance inspection that took place while I was occupying the wick drain driver, on June 25th, Ms. Hicks’ staff noted five “Corrective Measures” she required that Caltrans take. The first of these acknowledged that Caltrans had never studied the hydrological or epiaquic impacts of wick draining, precisely as I had been pointing out. Her order stated, “By September 1, 2013, schedule a meeting between Corps staff and Caltrans hydrologists to discuss potential secondary effects from wick drains on wetlands hydrology, specifically shallow epiaquic saturation and groundwater through-flow affecting wetland hydrology criteria and duration in existing wetlands.”

I occupied the so-called “wick drain stitcher” for 11 and-a-half days, shutting down work in the area entirely for a portion of that time. The California Highway Patrol SWAT team from Sacramento extracted me from my perch on July 1st.

Now, CalTrans’ efforts to wrangle criminal restitution fees from me in connection with the wick drain stitcher occupation is finally limping its way into court. On Thursday, July 17th, CalTrans is slated to send their attorneys all the way from Sacramento to Ukiah to try to squeeze blood from a turnip.

Originally, CalTrans’ restitution claim against me was $490,002. Then it became $481,155. The AVA published a great editorial deconstructing these figures this past January. With little explanation, Big Orange’s accountants then decided they were about 221 percent off the mark when they filed the $481,155 claim. They reduced it to roughly $150,000 in the early-spring.

The Mendocino County DA was apparently prepared to let the whole restitution claim go, but someone at CalTrans specifically asked that I be made to pay. The restitution claims against other protesters who locked down to construction equipment have faded away.

How about this for a stilted regulatory system? CalTrans is free to prosecute me for 150 grand in damages they say I caused by sitting on construction equipment for a little over 11 days. But the maximum fine the Army Corps of Engineers is allowed to charge CalTrans for destroying a huge area of federally protected wetlands, in violation of a permit allowing Big Orange to destroy a huge area of federally protected wetlands, is $27,500 –18.3 percent as much.

CalTrans will spend more money sending their lawyers from Sacramento to Ukiah and than I’ll make for writing this article.

I settled every other aspect of the case in January, pleading to two conditional misdemeanors that drop to infractions after two years of my not being convincted of any other misdemeanors, as well as 100 hours of community service (which I completed this past Monday). I had originally faced 16 misdemeanors and a maximum eight-year prison sentence. Instead, I made out prison-free.

I invite all my readers to attend the proceedings next week on Thursday, July 17th. The restitution hearing takes place at 9:30 a.m. in Courtroom “B,” Ukiah Courthouse. A rally on the courthouse steps takes place at noon.
~~

Feeds: Mendo Island & Independent News

Sea Chantey (Oxford, 1861) There is an insect that people avoid (Whence is derived the verb “to flee”). Where have you been by it most annoyed? In lodgings by the sea. If you like your coffee with sand for dregs, A decided hint of salt in your tea, And a fishy taste in the very […]

Today, a new psychological repression hides in plain sight. It is the servant of a modern ideology, a religion really, that says the material world is soulless and merely fodder for economic growth. This repression prevents most from seeing our ecological predicament and therefore from understanding it or acting in response to it. This repression is of the v […]

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In an interview during the 40-hour standoff in Portland, Luke Strandquist describes what it’s like on the front line of standing up to Shell Oil.By Katherine Bagley Cloaked in early morning darkness, 13 Greenpeace volunteers climbed over the edge of the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Ore. on Wednesday and rappelled down climbing ropes so they could hover 100 […]

Hundreds of corporate giants have rallied to urge governors to see the upcoming regulations as a boost for the economy.By Katherine Bagley Three hundred sixty-five companies and investors sent letters on Friday to more than two dozen governors supporting the Environmental Protection Agency's plans to significantly reduce carbon emissions from power plan […]

(Houston Chronicle)Shell launched Arctic drilling on Thursday by sending a specialized bit spinning into the bottom of the Chukchi Sea, as critics protested against the campaign. The company now has until Sept. 28 to drill the top portions of up to two wells at its Burger prospect about 70 miles northwest of the Alaska coastline, but after fixing a damaged i […]

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is proposing an interstate compact to defy federal law and "shield" states from the EPA's imminent Clean Power Plan.By Naveena Sadasivam With the Obama administration poised to issue its sweeping rules to cut carbon pollution from power plants, a Texas-based conservative think tank is making a far-fetched bid […]

According to this permanently-smiling Christian, the Large Hadron Collider is a horrible idea because God did away with the Tower of Babel.So, you know, logic.The video gets really "interesting" around the 5:05 mark.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker, who thinks atheists are missing out because we don’t have cool hats like other religious people, says there are some Protestants who believe in a childish version of faith… [According to atheists, religious people] are also supposed to believe in a God who answers prayers here below and gives us goodies if [Read More...]

Small is beautiful, when small is skilled and dedicated. ~Gene Logsdon

Morality is doing right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right. ~H L Mencken

I've observed that people tend to live at one of two extremes in the spectrum of life: those who live on the edge, and those who avoid the edge. Those who live on the edge are hanging out in the most dangerous and unstable places — yet they're also often the most powerful agents of change, because the edge is where change is happening; away from the edge, things are naturally unchanging. ~Thom Hartmann

Come on. You just can’t come up with anything more ridiculous than someone who honestly thinks that all human woes stem from an incident in which a talking snake accosted a naked woman in a primeval garden and talked her into eating a piece of fruit. ~Keith Parsons

Life is not a problem to be solved, nor a question to be answered. Life is a mystery to be experienced. ~Alan Watts

What is not worth doing, is not worth doing well. ~Abraham Maslow

Society is like a stew: If you don't stir it up every now and then, the scum rises to the top.~Edward Abbey

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. ~Buckminster Fuller

How thoughtful of God to arrange matters so that, wherever you happen to be born, the local religion always turns out to be the true one. ~ Richard Dawkins

I’m not saying there isn’t a god, but there isn’t a god who cares about people. And who wants a god who doesn’t give a shit? ~Robert Munsch

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day; Give him a religion, and he'll starve to death
while praying for a fish. ~ Anon

When you understand why you dismiss all the other gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours. ~ Stephen Roberts

Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning. ~ Joseph Campbell

I sang as one / Who on a tilting deck sings / To keep men's courage up, though the wave hangs / That shall cut off their sun. ~C. Day Lewis

Transition Tools (Basic)

Stoics/Freethought

Zeno Stoics

Local Organic Family Farms

THE SMALL ORGANIC FARM greatly discomforts the corporate/ industrial mind because the small organic farm is one of the most relentlessly subversive forces on the planet. Over centuries both the communist and the capitalist systems have tried to destroy small farms because small farmers are a threat to the consolidation of absolute power.

Thomas Jefferson said he didn’t think we could have democracy unless at least 20% of the population was self-supporting on small farms so they were independent enough to be able to tell an oppressive government to stuff it.

It is very difficult to control people who can create products without purchasing inputs from the system, who can market their products directly thus avoiding the involvement of mercenary middlemen, who can butcher animals and preserve foods without reliance on industrial conglomerates, and who can’t be bullied because they can feed their own faces. ~Eliot Coleman

What is a fact beyond all doubt is that we share an ancestor with every other species of animal and plant on the planet. We know this because some genes are recognizably the same genes in all living creatures, including animals, plants and bacteria. And, above all, the genetic code itself — the dictionary by which all genes are translated — is the same across all living creatures that have ever been looked at. We are all cousins. Your family tree includes not just obvious cousins like chimpanzees and monkeys but also mice, buffaloes, iguanas, wallabies, snails, dandelions, golden eagles, mushrooms, whales, wombats and bacteria. All are our cousins. Every last one of them. Isn't that a far more wonderful thought than any myth? And the most wonderful thing of all is that we know for certain it is literally true...

The whole world is made of incredibly tiny things, much too small to be visible to the naked eye — and yet none of the myths or so-called holy books that some people, even now, think were given to us by an all-knowing god, mentions them at all! In fact, when you look at those myths and stories, you can see that they don't contain any of the knowledge that science has patiently worked out. They don't tell us how big or how old the universe is; they don't tell us how to treat cancer; they don't explain gravity or the internal combustion engine; they don't tell us about germs, or anesthetics. In fact, unsurprisingly, the stories in holy books don't contain any more information about the world than was known to the primitive peoples who first started telling them! If these 'holy books' really were written, or dictated, or inspired, by all-knowing gods, don't you think it's odd that those gods said nothing about any of these important and useful things? -Richard Dawkins

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need. ~ Cicero